


Of Talk Shows and Trees

by 9_of_Clubs



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: And I would not mess with his Boyfriends, And a Boss, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extended Meta Universe, Hurt/Comfort, It takes a Team, M/M, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, The Fangirls love Bucky, Tony Stark Is a Good Bro, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony and Bucky have been through so much of the same stuff, Tony loves Twitter, it hurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 23:18:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13646487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9_of_Clubs/pseuds/9_of_Clubs
Summary: I was watching a panel from a con last night, where the moderator, apropo of nothing, tells Seb, Chris and Anthony that "The Winter Soldier is still kind of a dick." Then I got to thinking, what if this happened to Bucky inside the world verse during an interview.--The last things they hear are, first, Tony’s voice. “So you know, I’ve been actually looking into Television acquisition. This show’s on a nice channel right? Comfy, cozy? Maybe I can rename it All Access Avengers. We’d need to do some clean up, of course.”And then a younger voice, delivering what sounds like it’ll shape up to be one serious rant in furious tones. “God, you are such an asshole, you know Bucky Barnes is a hero, right?”





	Of Talk Shows and Trees

**Author's Note:**

> For those curious, here is the interview! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxJy5RYWHVA&feature=youtu.be&t=38m42s ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxJy5RYWHVA&feature=youtu.be&t=38m42s)

It doesn’t go right from the beginning, and Steve, Steve had known, in hindsight. Ought to have followed the prickles down the back of his neck and pulled his team out of a situation that was going south. That’s on him, because he’s a leader, and he’d _known_.  
  
It’s not their usual kind of interview - they’d made the executive decision to stick with a demographic they were pretty sure they could win. The middle aged housewives, Tony had drawled with a fairly pleased grin, and the fangirls. “ _Bleeding hearts,”_ his voice had been teasing but fond, even as Steve had stepped in to remind him to show some respect. Tony’s grin had only widened, a darker shade crossing into the brown, behind him Bucky’s lips curved into a shadow of a smirk, even though he hates talking about these things, dreads doing them with a real intensity. “ _Kinky geniuses?”_ Tony had suggested instead, and the bark of Steve’s laughter had been real as he swiped out for him.  
  
But this is not that.  
  
_“It’s a good opportunity_ ,” Tony had said, confident, determined, but Steve catches the edge of doubt in his tone. Their PR team had advised they needed to start tackling a wider audience, needed more universal support, “ _if you don’t want to get cancelled_ ,” was how it had been phrased on the phone call, and Bucky’s shoulders had squared, jaw clenching. Steve could have reached right through the phone and throttled the woman. But she’s not wrong. They’re not doing this for the pleasure it brings any one of them, they’re fighting a war, a war for their own public image, but mostly for Bucky’s, a war to keep him safe and that’s more important than their own hangups.  
  
_“We need to make him everyone’s favorite.”_ Tony had murmured to him back when this started, back when he’d still been loudly protesting the whole thing as a mission destined for failure, as a step taken too soon, as unbelievably, unfucking fair. Yes, language, he knows, language. “ _They can’t make him disappear if 10 million people are clamoring to meet him._ ”  
  
In the end, it had been Bucky’s decision, and Steve is with him till, well, you know.  
  
All in all, the outcome has been in their favor, harder at first, but Tony had been more legislated then, careful set-ups, only interviews that were being filmed on delay so they could edit them as necessary, with people who they more or less owned, loosening the grips only as it became clear the tides were turning. And though there have been slips ups, Steve still cringes out of nowhere when memory of Holly comes, and her young, guileless, _So when did you decide like, to not be Hydra? Do you prefer it?,_ of the look of complete shock writ into Bucky’s face that followed, but then too, of the stumbling answer, the viral outcry in his defense that had turned out to be a good thing. But this is a new kind of stage.  
  
_“What aren’t you telling me?”_  
  
He’d cornered Tony before they’d made their decision and Tony only half shrugged.  
  
_“Been on Jeremy’s show before, during all that stuff with, you know, after I got back with this.”_ A pat to his heart where the reactor had once sat. _“Said a thing or two I didn’t need to hear at the time, but I think the stuff we hit him with after that put him back on the straight and narrow.”_ Tony’s lip had curled. “ _For a while_.”  
  
Tony doesn’t elaborate, and doesn’t disagree when the rest of the team pushes for it. _Nerd boy,_ they’d term this one. Adjacent to the fangirls, but more obsessive, less creative, more macho and less feels, still easier for them to win than the people who can’t even conceive of superheroes and their struggle at all.  
  
Steve doesn’t like it, but the show and the magazine Jeremy is a part of do seem to have a lot of followers. And a live audience is usually a good thing for them these days, especially one that gets to ask questions. Some of their more reliable fans are always showing up and asking exactly the right things - a strange trust in them that Steve hadn’t thought would be possible for him. He wonders if Tony feeds them questions by email, but smiles the thought away and doesn’t ask.  
  
He doesn’t argue either, but goes to google, who he knows won’t let him down, to see what Tony won’t tell him. It takes exactly thirty seconds to pull up the youtube video, cringing at the name. “Jeremy Killroy - What an asshole.”  
  
On the small rectangle of video, Tony is sprawled along a chair casually, and is mid-interview, he looks ill at ease, and Steve thinks with a shark’s smile tugging at the edge of his lips, he looks good, dark jeans and a t-shirt, sunglasses even though it’s inside. He seems younger, somehow, more open around the edges, though clearly, clearly on his guard. Good, but lonely, but alone, no one to watch his back on this theater of battle.  
  
“So you get captured in the desert, and what it’s like a retreat for you? Little soul searching adventure? Come back with a whole new outlook?”  
  
Steve can’t see him, but he’s sure the brown eyes are narrowing behind dark shades.  
  
“Killroy, we’re not here to talk about my spa days, remember? You wanted to hear about the whole weapons shut down, good of the world bit. Come on, you’re the interviewer, I’m just the billionaire, shouldn’t have to remind you how to do your job.” Tony’s voice is light, but there’s a knife’s edge below that Steve recognizes.  
  
“We _are._ ” Killroy grins back but at once his demeanor is hungrier, like he can smell something, “I just want to know if you shutting down the bread and butter practice of your company has more to do with the good of the world, or -” Steve can practically the collective intake of breath from the crowd, his own fists are clenched. Killroy finishes, self satisfied “with the way your hands are shaking?”  
  
Tony’s fingers twitch and ball on the screen, and he opens his mouth to reply, but the video cuts off, Tony’s actual hand is on his shoulder.  
  
“Didn’t clock him in the face.” The voice from behind him is low as he shifts around to look up at Tony. There’s a wry old pain in the other’s features, gaze brushing  past Steve at the now ended video, his face blinking up at them from a thousand small squares. “But I wanted to.”  
  
“Maybe, we shouldn’t -” He starts, but Tony has bent over, a light, smiling kiss to his lips. The pain there is old, but they’ve healed, but they’re here, he tilts his head back to let the other deepen it, Tony’s hand bracing itself against Steve’s shoulder as he does.  
  
“It’s old news -” Tony murmurs. “Kat and Tina will tell him what’s off limits, I was too fucking sure I’d be fine no matter what last time, that I just had to be,  I didn’t make it clear and I paid for it, we know way better now, I do, learned all my lessons and you know I’m good at doing that. It’ll be _fine._ ”  
  
And it’s easy to believe that when Tony’s lips are warm on his, when touch is clouding his vision, and the relief that it’s easy to do this again, to reach out, to find each other again is bright and hot in him every time.  
  
He forgets the cardinal rule with them though, as Tony’s fingers work deftly at the buttons of his shirt, computer light blinking out into black, taking with it the warning signs. Things are never just fine for them.  
  
They’re on the stage, and it’s almost time to go. Tony is on the edge of one of the couches, his limbs askew, arm thrown over the armrest with gusto, legs wide in an exaggerated spread, which make him seem dramatic, the enigmatic, snarky diva, and fails to draw attention to the way it lets him brush his knees against Bucky’s without the other having to do much more than slouch. Steve is a chair turned towards them and Jeremy, shoulders back where they’re both hunched, broad and smiling and attention attracting. He’d chosen it specifically, he likes to be able to see them both at once while still looking like he’s paying attention to the host or the crowd. Bucky is between them, of course, not exposed to either the former or the latter without it hitting them first. He’s gotten marginally better at these over time, though he doesn’t really tend to speak much if they’re both there with him. This has lead to the misearned reputation of being slightly slow on the draw, even though Steve knows between the three of them, that’s definitely him, or the slightly fonder narrative of, shy. Either way, that ultimately brings them farther away from the  _sharp shooting assassin_ image which is basically enough to make anything go in the win pile. He’s stopped too, at the suggestion of their team, letting his hair fall into his face.  
  
_“It makes him look like he’s hiding something._ ” Kat had groused and Steve had pulled himself to his full height, arms crossed.  
  
“ _You can address Bucky directly then and ask if he’d consider pulling back his hair, if that’s what you’re hoping will happen._ ”  
  
Tony had looked up from his phone then, behind Steve, brow raised, face stony, and Bucky had said nothing, eyes on his hands, but eventually the other had apologized, and she’d seemed sincerely flustered. It hadn’t happened again.  
  
Bucky had taken the suggestion though, and doesn’t seem to mind too much, but ironically, it leaves Steve kind of uncomfortable. He doesn’t like the way it bares every one of Bucky's features to the glaring camera lights, eyes, and mouth, and neck, all of that skin,  nowhere to hide. It makes him think of other eyes on Bucky, Bucky on a table, Bucky in a chair, Bucky - He shakes the thoughts out his head hard because this is so not the time. And Bucky is fine. He’s sitting there and he’s fine, even smiling a little from the last question, where some nervous girl, it helps Bucky, he thinks, when they’re nervous too, had sputtered out an almost incoherent set of words, wondering if they had any pets at the Avengers compound.  
  
“Just lots of spiders and birds, sometimes a big cat.” Tony had groused immediately. And Bucky had actually laughed at that, had actually lifted his microphone to his lips in a pretty uncharacteristic way and murmured out, a booming murmur.  
  
“I’m telling T’Challa and Sam you said that.”  
  
Tony had turned grinning, an infectious grin that he knows Bucky can’t resist and that he can’t either, and Bucky’s smile had actually gotten bigger, spread across his cheeks in a way that’s good for the world to see, white teeth and charm.  
  
“Not Clint and Nat?”  
  
“Nah-” Bucky had run a hand through his tied back hair, endearingly flustered as he realized the whole crowd was hanging on to their banter. “They’d shoot the messenger. And Peter would probably like -” He makes a face and Tony’s eyes crinkle fond that Bucky had remembered to think of Peter. “Try to hug me or something cause he’d be to excited you’d mentioned him at all.” Bucky sends his smile just slightly out to the crowd, but still mostly to Tony, they’re working on it. “And I’ve got a rep to uphold.” He hesitates there in the center of attention as the audience laughs, uncertain again, but Tony intercedes.  
  
“Got that people?” He calls out to the crowd, stealing back the limelight, becoming bigger than himself enough to let Bucky settle back into the depths of the couch. Only Jeremy is watching him, Steve notices as Tony’s voice laughs around them. “@ Clint - the Falcon is much more housetrained than you are and @ Peter, tell him Tony sends his love. Tell him! Do it! He’ll reply to you, and he’ll follow you, he’s easy like that! No - no, don’t tell him that part.”  
  
The hosts eyes are suddenly on Bucky as though he’d forgotten he was there, and not just a hulking accessory who stumbles through basic questions. As though in that animated moment, he’s become someone else entirely. Steve frowns and the other’s eyes turn to him instead, locking. But then the man only smiles and his gaze slides back to the audience.  
  
“Okay - okay, if you’re all not too busy getting Spiderman to follow you, why don’t we get the next question. Yeah - you?” He points out to the crowd, and Steve sees Tony’s hand slide onto Bucky’s thigh for a moment, squeezing, which he can’t help but smirk a little about. It’ll be the top hit on their tag in the next heartbeat, but it swells his heart, honestly, to see the quiet show of support.  
  
It’s a guy’s voice that fills the space, which is pretty unusual for them, given the avenues they’ve been going, but Steve turns, attentive when he hears his name.  
  
“Steve, hey, so like - if you had to give up the shield to one of these two.”  
  
Steve tries not to cringe at that specific threading of words, at the thought of having actually, literally, given up his shield to them both in two differently excruciating ways, but this guy doesn’t know that - he reminds himself. He doesn’t know them.  
  
“Which one would you give it to?”  
  
There’s a curious murmur in the crowd, Tony is rolling his eyes and Bucky looks in no particular direction.  
  
“Uh -” He shakes his head and taps his fingers against the couch. “Wow, who would I give it to?” The kid nods his head and Steve furrows his brow.  
  
“You know he sleeps with that thing, right?” Tony’s voice is snarky from the side, ruling out choice and death in one deft response. “He’d probably want it hung up in the retirement home if it came to that. Tell all the little old ladies what a hero he was. If you think either one of us can get him to even leave it at home when we go for a snack run, you obviously think we’re much more powerful than we are”  
  
Steve smiles, grateful, about to go the cop out route, when Jeremy’s voice interjects.  
  
“Honestly though - you should probably give it to Iron Man, right? He’s really stepped it up for you guys, getting you back after the accords, making sure everyone knows that you were doing the right thing -” His gaze is on Steve and Steve stares back, taken aback, mouth thinning. “And it’s his dad’s shield, isn’t it?” He’s not the only one bristling now, Tony, all at once ready for battle at the mention of his father rounding around to half glare at the host. Bucky is still looking at the vicinity of the table in front of him, sight line stopping just short of the audience. Chatter is rising in the air, swirling like mist from the ocean at this line of thought.  
  
“And the Winter Soldier -” Bucky’s eyes snap up at the name but not over. And Steve is pretty sure that phrase had quite clearly been somewhere at the top of their _No Go_ list. Too much for Bucky to hear it, let alone be called it somewhere he’s volunteered to be, after having to trudge through hearing it at all the places he hadn’t. After this hard won fight they’ve been waging to help him fit into his own self. “Has been kind of a dick.”  
  
There’s, small miracle of miracles, an outcry of displeasure from the crowd at this, a strong and sustained gasp of shock that turns into something more vehemently decrying. And he thinks Jeremy says something like “ _Well, no offense,_ ” but he’s grinning at the sudden reaction, at the attention that this will surely get, good or bad, it doesn’t matter.  
  
Tony isn’t looking directly at Bucky, because Steve knows he doesn’t want to draw attention to it, but he doesn’t have time for games right now, and he lets his eyes fall over the other. There’s no trace of the mildly loose ease that had been there moments ago, Bucky’s back has gone ramrod straight, bad, and his shoulders are hunched over themselves, bad, and he’s paled, lips pressing against one another in minute motions, thin line after thin line. Steve can almost hear him thinking _I have, haven’t I?_ And it makes the blood rush hot in his ears. Bad, bad, bad.  
  
The crowd sits expectant.  
  
And then Bucky is moving his microphone towards his mouth, Tony whirling to find Steve’s eyes, he opens his hands a little as though to say, we wait, and as much as he wants to reach out and drag Bucky away before any more damage can be done, it’s important, the notion been drilled into him, it’s important to let Bucky make these calls.  
  
“It’s -” The other’s voice is thinner now, and though he knows Bucky is trying to keep it flat, it wobbles a little around the words, and over the paleness of skin, red patches are starting to flush his cheeks, down his neck, exposed to the light. “It’s James, actually. Winter sol- he, uh, he wasn’t me.”  
  
“Wasn’t you?” Jeremy manages to deliver this with such exacting incredulousness, whispers that vary from high strung excitement to wisps of fury spread around them. He pins Bucky to the stage with his gaze, the same vicious hunger from years ago surfacing all at once, and Bucky looks a hair’s breadth away from being ill, fingers twitching, metal and skin, where he’s pushed them under his legs the mic placed quickly down at his side, so they don’t, Steve assumes, clench into fists, so he doesn’t seem threatening in front of so many people, the ones in front of them, the thousands of screens turned on, the millions of places this is bound to go in the next heartbeat.  
  
But he doesn’t think anyone could look at Bucky at just this second and think he was in any way about to hurt anyone at all. He seems too small for his clothes all at once, and there’s a grace gone from his limbs, the clumsy heat of embarrassment twisting through them. Vulnerable, scared, and so intensely ashamed. Steve _hates_ it, hates seeing this painted on him so brightly somewhere where it’s not just them. This isn’t the first time this has happened, obviously, but it’s the first time where they’ve set up the scenario for it to.  
  
_Villain,_ the words pervade off of him, _not victim._ The thought messing with the hard won, but still fragile, realities Bucky has worked so hard to see as truth, coming from a place that wants his pain, or wants him to hurt, at best, doesn’t care. He tries not to think of the images Bucky painted in exhausted nights, tucked between them, a half dressed savage in a room of suits, every last part of him there for their own vicious entertainment, for their whims.  
  
It’s too familiar.  
  
And Jeremy’s voice is echoing again.  
  
“Seemed like you.” There’s an arrogant amusement to the words, a cat with the canary drawl. “Should we ask the audience what they -”  
  
In the next instant, Tony’s gaze has flashed towards him with a nod, there’s icy fury in the features, the kind that has been directed at Steve before and he swears will never be again. A hard, vicious, anger that comes from his every cell. Steve can taste it on his tongue too, vicious, viscous, and flat. He wants, with every last fiber of his being, wants, to bash in Jeremy’s smug face with his fist, leave it a bloody bleeding pulp that’ll be the only thing he thinks about the next time he even considers opening his mouth about Bucky. He wants to knock his teeth out, he wants to black his eyes. But there are other ways, he knows, and he’s not in this alone. Bucky is priority one, Tony will take care of the rest.  
  
He’s on his feet before another word can be said and he’s towering over Jeremy, who looks up at him, eyes widening, sudden fear in them. He knows this is about to hit every social account in the world, so he pauses to put his mask of charm back on. Smiling, though his eyes are hard.  
  
“That.” He crosses his arms and straightens, boring holes into the other’s face. “Was completely inappropriate.”  
  
And then turns out to the audience, softening. The girl next in the question line has a fake metal arm and she looks so furious, like she’s going to run up there and do some punching of her own.  
  
“Sorry guys, Buck and I have to go, there’s a situation that needs our attention.” It’s weak, but it doesn’t matter. He does allow for a smile though as he meet the girl’s face and she nods, sharp, fierce, even worried. “I know some of you have been waiting patiently to talk to us, so Tony, he’ll get your information and we’ll try to reschedule, okay?”    
  
There’s cheers from the crowd, but he’s already turned on his heel, he pauses in front of Bucky, who looks up at him, unclear emotions on his face, but takes the hand he’s offered with his metal one, lets himself pulled be off stage.  
  
The last things they hear are, first, Tony’s voice. “So you know, I’ve been actually looking into Television acquisition. This show’s on a nice channel right? Comfy, cozy? Maybe I can rename it All Access Avengers. We’d need to do some clean up, of course.”  
  
And then a younger voice, delivering what sounds like it’ll shape up to be one serious rant in furious tones. “God, you are such an asshole, you know Bucky Barnes is a hero, right?”  
  
Then silence.

\--

They sit in the car and wait for Tony in much the same. Bucky won’t look at him and Steve doesn’t push him, the anger has faded into an intense worry, a desire to ask a thousand questions, to hear that Bucky is okay, or he isn’t, anything but the uncertainty of the quiet. But he contents himself with putting his hand on Bucky’s knee, and the other doesn’t shake it off, lets his own hand come to sit on top of it, even though it keeps tensing and tightening as though it’s going to jump away. That effort, however frail, is welcome.  
  
  
Tony comes another fifteen minutes later, and he’s still rife with rage. He throws himself into the front seat and slams the door, raw around the edges. “That _fucking_ bastard. I swear to you.” They’re pulling out and driving away, towards home Steve thinks with relief. “That man is paying out of his nose, he is not working another fucking day in TV in his life. I can’t believe -”

The rant sputters and slows, and Bucky raises his head a fraction, lets it loll back onto the leather of the headrest. He raises the side of his lip, almost imperceptible. Tony’s eyes are on him through the mirror.  
  
“Sorry. Still in fight mode.” Tony exhales, tries to soften. “Had to really make him pay for that, you know? Not cool.” He shakes his head. “Not fair.”  
  
Bucky shrugs his shoulders and turns to the window. Tony’s eyes find Steve’s instead and he can read the same thought on both their faces. Not good.  
  
The compound is thankfully more or less empty when they get back and Steve turns to Bucky, not sure what he’s going to say, but the other is already disappearing down a hallway.  
  
“I’m just gonna -” He stops short of an actual explanation, fingers pulling the tie out of his hair, and then he’s turned a corner and vanished.

“Fuck.” He can’t help but turn to a wall and punch his fist into it, hard. All of the buildings on the compound are made of materials he can’t actually dent, but won’t hurt him that much if he tries exactly this. It leaves a throb in his fingers, but its welcome pain, helps settle the churning need to _act_ in some way, to move through the breathless anguish that is piling up in his throat.

Tony lets him punch it again, and a third time, before he’s kicked off his shoes and laid a hand on Steve’s shoulder, guiding him towards the couch instead, pushing him down and settling against him. “You’ll actually dent it if you hit it again and we do not need construction in here on top of everything else.”

“Sorry.” Steve exhales, tight, and he is. He’s making a scene, he’s not holding it together well. He wants to wrap Bucky in his arms, to promise him he’s not, not any of that, that it _wasn’t_ him and they all know it. Even Jeremy knows it, he was just too greedy to care.

Tony shakes his head and then lets it rest against Steve’s shoulder, he seems tired against Steve’s shoulder and suddenly, Steve can feel his own exhaustion too. The world too heavy on his shoulders, its stubborn, endless insistence on hurting Bucky. And he, too insignificant to save him from it _ever._

“Hey -” The voice in his ear is a little sharper. “Not you too, okay? This wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t my fault, and we’re not going to blame ourselves or each other.” From Tony, he knows he has to respect these words. Knows that they mean a lifetime of struggle to get out and he owes Tony to hold himself to them. “It was one singular asshole’s fault and he’s going to get his.”

There’s a solidity and a finality in Tony’s tone that Steve clings to, a determination that everything is not going to go off the rails again, and he needs that so intensely sometimes, is relieved to be able to borrow it from Tony when he can’t find it in himself.

“And I know it wasn’t -” Tony lapses a little, voice a little lower all at once. “I know it wasn’t great and it hurt, but you know, Bucky did pretty well - as well as he could have, maybe better. That’s something.”

_It’s James, actually._

Progress, hard won.

It doesn’t stop the hollowness spreading in his chest.

\--

Tony’s fingers stroke through Steve’s hair, the other radiating rage and pain, the tired, old notes of the protector unable to protect, and Tony loves him for it, for wanting to keep, Bucky, them both, these days, from everything that could go wrong in the world. But Steve knows, and he knows, and Bucky knows too, that’s not a reality.

Steve lets him go and doesn’t try to follow when he rises with a little smile, and shifts out of the room. This is something Steve is more equipped to hold and heal when it’s in a less raw place than it might still be right now, when affirmation and unyielding love is enough to make it better.  This is why they’re a team, this is why they’re a three.

He walks out to the backyard in bare feet. He’s glad they’d chosen this over the city, Bucky doesn’t need that, the constant sirens and bangs, the endless tide of sound and people, a peaceful murmur when you’re calm, an overwhelming barrage when you aren’t.

Here, the sky is blue and endless, lazy afternoon sun painting pines in gold and only the thrum of the wind rustles through the leaves. He pads out through the grass, grateful it’s a warm spring day and not the dead of winter, little shoots are poking through the earth and everything seems to breathe of life, they need that.

Bucky is tucked into himself at the bottom of a huge oak, knees to his chest, back to the bark, face upturned to the sun. He’s beautiful, Tony thinks, pausing at some distance to watch him, before he ruins the peace with his presence, but sadness is rife around him, porcelain pain, a fragility that marks how easy it still might be to shatter him, that he shoves so far deep beneath sarcasm, bluster, and hair, it’s hard to see most days, even for them. But in exhaustion and for the leaves, he wears it now.

Blue eyes move to his. If he were Steve, there would probably be some attempt made at a smile, but he’s himself, and nothing moves to hide.

“Hey.” He says quietly, taking it as agreement that his presence has been accepted.

Bucky looks at him and just nods. He sits in front of him so the other doesn’t have to turn or crane, a hand out, slow, projected movement, to wrap around one of Bucky’s ankles. Bucky watches the touch and shakes his head.

Tries.

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” Tony doesn’t call bullshit, won’t disagree with him on what he is or how he feels, but he makes the question clear.

Bucky huffs a little, turns his head skyward again, stray rays of light making his features glow, glinting off his arm. He’s shed the jacket he’d been wearing on the show, only in a loose white t-shirt now, they’d stopped with dark colors a long time again, and he’s shed his shoes, toes burrowing into the dirt. The white suits him, pale against the paleness of his skin, stark against the darkness of his hair.

“Maybe.”

Tony nods.

“You know, I went on that asshole’s show like a decade ago, just after everything, and he asked me if I was putting an end to the weapon’s manufacturing because I -” He air quotes egregiously against the bitterness. “ ‘Got a little scared.’ ”

Emotion flashes hot into the flat expanses of Bucky’s eyes, breathtaking anger suddenly crashing through the floodgate, a fierce burn of flame. He knows he shouldn’t be pleased at the show of indignance on his behalf, but it still thrills him a little that someone cares, that Bucky cares. He worries sometimes, about how much it does, but that is a problem for another time. 

“Did he know?” The voice has ridges of growl in it, and Tony knows some of it is a question about Tony, and some of it is a question about himself, that it’s easier, to feel these things, for someone else.

“What, that I’d been broken open in some dirty terrorist cell and thought in no uncertain terms and several times that I was going to die?” He squeezes the bare skin of Bucky’s ankle, as the other swallows hard. It’s still not easy for him to say these words, still brings up the old familiar twinges in his arm, the rush of breathlessness. But he _can_ say them and Bucky will be able to too, sooner or later  “Maybe. But you don’t have to be Hydra to be an asshole.”

Their eyes lock.

“To make someone else feel like they’re trash.”

Bucky’s lids fall shut at that, deep breaths coursing in and out of his body.

“Yeah.” He murmurs. “Guess that’s true.”

“But I know it’s harder to know that he’s _just being an asshole_ , when you kind of think he’s not wrong already.”

He moves closer, Bucky’s eyes are still closed, and gently pushes a strand of hair off his face, slow, gentled movements as he sits cross legged next to the other.

“It wasn’t -” The words are thin, barely audible against the hush of hair and twitter of birds. “I don’t. I know I’m, that I’m _not_ the guy who did all of that, not anymore. That I’ve stopped and I’m _trying._ ” The thin, determined words press ache into Tony’s heart, balloon something already overly swollen inside of him, horrible hope and terrible love. “But he’s right, I did do it, and people see that and just -” A shudder draws through the other’s body, he draws himself closer. “To be like that, so fucking casually, like it doesn’t matter, like it’s a joke - like I’m -” The words race into each other, over each other, blur in a cadence of rapid breaths and Tony’s hand wraps around his wrist instead, squeezes in the rhythm of a normal heartbeat until he’s calmed again.

“I should’ve been mad. Like you were, like Steve, and I wasn’t, I was just… I couldn’t even be mad, how fucked up is that? Just like I couldn’t be mad when Hydra, when Pierce, when any of them.” He breaks off, and he sounds mad now, but it’s not going the right way. “Just like it’s still hard to know to be, even now.”

“Keep thinking I’m almost a person.” It comes out savagely cutting, frustrated and unendurably sad. “But you can’t be a person if no one thinks you are, if not even you do, when push comes to shove.”

“Hey -” Tony squeezes harder, wishes Bucky would open his eyes and look at him, but doesn't press, a surge of warning, of not yet fully conceived, but it’s coming, panic, working his way through him. “Hey. That’s not fair. I wouldn’t have it earlier when it was him and I won’t have it now either with you. You didn’t get mad, because you were shocked, because it was rude and twenty kinds of un-fucking-called for by some guy who's thinking about how many hits his dumb show will get. Not that it will help him, he’s cancelled, done, cooked, but that’s what he was thinking about. And believe you me, I heard some people in that audience after you left, who are definitely Team Bucky Is A Person. And you know, me, right here, President, and Steve, handsome man, probably wearing a hole into my floor right now, World Dictator. I’ll get us all jerseys, we’ll have a parade, they’ll all die of excitement.”

The smallest of smiles creeps back into the sharp lines of Bucky’s face and Tony exhales a little, his heart beating too fast still, but he softens his tone.

“I know it hasn’t been easy to put it all out there, talk about it, with strangers, with all these people who think they get to have an opinion now and that they understand any part of it at all. If I’d had to, after - after Afghanistan, tell the whole truth like this, I don’t think I could have, but you’ve done it, and it’s sucked, but you’ve done it.” Pride creeps into his voice and Bucky cracks his eyes open, just slightly.

“Just felt like I was back in the chair.” He admits quietly. “Someone else messing with all the thoughts in my head, and I couldn’t stop them, and everyone was watching.” His eyes close again for a half second but he forces them open. “The way he talked, like I wasn’t there.” Tony’s pressed in closer now, only a few breaths away. “But I was. I know I was. And now I’m _here._ ”

“Yes.” Tony agrees, but the word is lost to a featherlight kiss.

\--

Steve finds them an hour later, as sunset touches the world, brilliant hues of purple and pink mixing into the darkening hues. He’s clearly showered, and has shed his interview garb for something comfortable. The lines of his shoulders are more relaxed too and Bucky brightens, sincerely, when he sees him, presses into his shoulder when he sits down at his side.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks seriously, not one to mince words and not one to waste them, and Bucky nods.

“M’okay, Steve. It’s not the greatest headspace I’ve ever been in. But it’s not the worst.” He accepts it when Steve moves to wrap an arm around his shoulders, his metal fingers still loosely twined in Tony’s grasp. “Guess I could use a few hugs and you telling me how great I am.” He casts a wry smile at them both and Tony shakes his head as Steve kisses his cheek.

“Nuh-uh, did not sign up for the ego stroking.” Steve laughs and Bucky crushes his hand a little in his metal arm. It’s a rough life, loving super soldiers.

“I’ll just have re-assign you to the other kind of stroking then.” Bucky doesn’t miss a beat, and even though his smile isn’t as lewd as it might be on a different day with those words coming from between his lips, it means they’re on the right path towards the feeling better department.

“Maybe.” Tony grins back. “We have a whole new network to fill. ‘Avengers _All_ Access,’ remember, think the world is ready for that?”

Steve blushes, ducking his head but he’s smiling hard. “Tony.” He chides, but it’s in the fond way, the “I should have expected this from you, typical Tony,” voice a thing of the now-distant past, replaced with the, “I am in love with idiots” cadence that he’s always gratified to hear.

“Definitely not.” Bucky’s teeth are out now, and he’s calmer with the three of them all in one place. “But since when has that stopped us?”

Steve takes that moment though to intervene, to lean in, mouth to Bucky’s jaw. “You’re better than great.” And Bucky slides back against the tree, skin flushing for the second time today, letting himself have the words, even as Tony can see the active impulse to fight them. “You’re pretty damn amazing.” The smile that comes beneath Steve’s lips is sweet and soft.

Steve reaches out over Bucky to cover Tony’s other hand in his own, curling their fingers together.

“You too.”

Steve’s eyes are dancing, open in that way that disarms both him and Bucky every time, unashamed of his unabashed honesty and the true depth of his love.

“Not so bad yourself.” He murmurs back, and Bucky laughs, all of them settling back against each other.

The stars twinkle slowly out in the sky, and for this breath, at least, peace is more than just a dream.


End file.
